Page:Heidi - Spyri - 1922.djvu/370

 something wanting to his usual enjoyment of a good dinner, for every mouthful he swallowed seemed to choke him, and he felt something gnawing inside him.

They were so late at their dinner that they had not long to wait after they had finished before grandfather came up to fetch them. Heidi rushed forward to meet him as soon as he appeared, as she wanted to be the first to tell him the good news. She was so excited that she could hardly get her words out when she did get up to him, but he soon understood, and a look of extreme pleasure came into his face. He hastened up to where Clara was sitting and said with a cheerful smile, “So we’ve made the effort, have we, and won the day!”

Then he lifted her up, and putting his left arm behind her and giving her his right to lean upon, made her walk a little way, which she did with less trembling and hesitation than before now that she had such a strong arm round her.

Heidi skipped along beside her in triumphant glee, and the grandfather looked too as if some happiness had befallen him. But now he took Clara up in his arms. “We must not overdo it,” he said, “and it is high time we went home,” and he started off down the mountain path, for he was anxious to get her indoors that she might rest after her unusual fatigue.

When Peter got to Dörfli that evening he found a large group of people collected round a certain spot, pushing one another and looking over each other’s shoulders in their eagerness to catch sight of something lying on the ground. Peter thought he should like to see too, and poked and elbowed till he made his way through.

There it lay, the thing he had wanted to see. Scattered about